The Pentagon is sending extra troops to Iraq amid fears of an offensive by insurgents who want to destabilise the new Iraqi government.A battalion of 650 soldiers from the United States Army's 1st Armoured Division will be moved from Kuwait as a "temporary measure", even as officials draw up plans to reduce force levels in the country to around 100,000.Another Kuwait-based battalion from the same division, deployed in March, will remain, despite earlier assurances that it would leave, bringing total troop strength to 133,000.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk

An adviser to President Hugo Chavez said Friday that Venezuela is considering buying about two dozen Russian fighter jets to replace its fleet of F-16s because Washington has refused to sell the country upgrades for the US made planes. Venezuela is considering buying Sukhoi Su-35 fighters to replace the 21 US made F-16s, and Venezuelan pilots have already traveled to Russia to test out Russian warplanes, Gen. Alberto Muller told The A P. He said Venezuela was considering a purchase of roughly 24 planes. Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, meanwhile, said Venezuela is free to sell its F-16s to any country it wishes because the United States has violated a contract by refusing to sell replacement parts for the planes. When asked by a reporter if Venezuela would be willing to sell the F-16 fighters to Iran, Rangel said: "To whomever. What the United States does not have the right to do is suspend the supply (of replacement parts) after there's a contract and agreement." ...http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-05-20-venezuela_x.htm?csp=34

After spending half his life in a Pakistani jail, Tahir Mirza Hussain is scheduled to hang on his 36th birthday for killing a taxi driver — even though a court acquitted him 10 years ago. Hussain, a British-Pakistani, claims he is innocent. He was cleared by a secular court but retried and found guilty in an Islamic one. He now faces execution June 1 unless President Gen. Pervez Musharraf intervenes.His muddled case, spanning two decades, is emblematic of Pakistan's corrupt and bifurcated legal system, described by a leading rights activist as "flawed" and in desperate need of reform.Amnesty International has called for a retrial, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett have urged Musharraf to reconsider Hussain's sentence. He has already served 18 years in a cramped, dark cell, mostly at the notorious Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi near the capital....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,196326,00.html

Iranian police said on Saturday they had found papers linking Britain and the United States to vaguely identified "bandits" in a border province which is a drug smuggling center and a base for Sunni Muslim guerrillas. A British diplomat in Tehran said Britain had nothing to do with mounting lawlessness in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan. The United States has no embassy in Iran.Iran has previously blamed Britain and the United States for bombings and killings in its increasingly volatile frontier regions where unrest is simmering among Kurdish, Arab and Baluch minorities. Washington and London deny any involvement.Iranian police spokesman Mehdi Ahmadi said security forces had destroyed a bandit stronghold in the Pirsouran mountains of Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. The main opium smuggling route to Europe crosses the province....http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060520/ts_nm/iran_bandits_dc

An Israeli air strike in Gaza killed four Palestinians, including a top Islamic Jihad militant, on Saturday, prompting calls of revenge by the armed group to continue targeting Israel in rocket attacks. The missile strike occurred hours after Palestinian General Intelligence chief Tareq Abu Rajab was brought to Israel to treat wounds sustained in an explosion in an elevator at his Gaza Strip headquarters. His ally President Mahmoud Abbas called the blast, which killed one of Abu Rajab's aides and wounded 10 people, an assassination bid.If confirmed as a targeted attack, it would mark the highest-profile internal assassination attempt in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and could worsen enflamed tensions between loyalists of Abbas's Fatah group and Hamas supporters...http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060520/ts_nm/mideast_dc

Fewer than 15,000 of the millions of New Yorkers who filed tax returns this year checked off a box to make a donation to the World Trade Center Memorial fund, state officials said.The program raised $150,085, according to the Department of Taxation and Finance.The state allows taxpayers to make contributions to as many as seven charitable organizations on their tax forms. More than $420,000 was raised for breast cancer research and treatment while a wildlife fund raised nearly $353,000."We are slightly disappointed by the results," WTC Memorial Foundation President Gretchen Dykstra told the New York Daily News for a story in Saturday editions.Voluntary tax donations are only one way the foundation is raising money to build the World Trade Center memorial, a September 11 museum and two other cultural buildings at ground zero....http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/20/tax.donation.ap/index.html?section=cnn_us